Private Terms of Dominion

[Serina Calis]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



The shuttle slipped through the storm-wracked skies of Dromund Kaas like a shadow in freefall, its passage unseen by all but the most vigilant eyes. Lightning surged across the heavens, drawn in hungry arcs around the vessel's approach as though the world remembered her—remembered what she had once brought here, and what she might bring again.

Inside, Serina Calis waited.

She stood alone at the center of the transport's deployment chamber, surrounded by silence and softly pulsing violet light. Her form, normally clad in the biomechanical terror of Tyrant's Embrace, was today sheathed in something far more deliberate.

This armor did not scream domination.

It whispered power.

A flowing garment of articulated plating and dark synthweave, trimmed in ceremonial gold and deep amethyst, hugged her figure like the breath of ancient nobility. The armor was regal, but not cumbersome. Decorative, but not fragile. Its curves accentuated rather than concealed—sharp-edged elegance designed to disarm, to provoke, to suggest.

Her hood was drawn low over her brow, casting her upper face in soft shadow, the embroidered trim glinting faintly with each subtle movement. Beneath it, her mouth was a precise line—painted not for vanity, but for effect. Controlled. Sharp. Her breastplate shimmered with a faint, internal glow at the sternum, not the aggressive pulse of a reactor, but the steady cadence of focused will. Runes had been etched into the inner lining—not ancient war-sigils, but prayers to discipline, etched in her own hand.

Serina had chosen not to wear Tyrant's Embrace.

Not out of fear.

Not out of weakness.

But as an act of respect.

It would have been a farce to shield herself with armor in the presence of Darth Prazutis. The Koshûyok did not care for masks of power. He was power. And Serina, in her infinite precision, had decided this visit would not begin with a lie.

Her intention was to request. But her presence would demonstrate growth and respect.

It had been over a year since she last stood on Dromund Kaas. Since she had last passed beneath the gaze of a being who did not see her as a rival, or a tool, or a servant—but as function incarnate. A blade to be tempered, honed, and used. And she had thrived under that cold weight. She had taken the silence he gave her and filled it with ruin.

The ruin of Saijo, of the Tsis'Kaar.

Now, she returned to bargain for a weapon that required no ritual: the Fourth Legion.

In return, she would offer her vote in the Assembly to the Kainites—without drama, without cost. And more: the Legion's oath, sworn to the Kainite cause should civil war erupt. Not as allies. As certainty.

The pitch was simple.

And lethal.

The shuttle's descent completed without fanfare. A soft hum, the hiss of pressure equalizing, the drop ramp easing down with practiced solemnity. No guards flanked her. No heralds announced her name. Only the subtle hush of systems powering down, and the mechanical rhythm of a world preparing to measure her again.

Serina moved.

Her boots, slender and elegantly pointed, made no sound as they touched the durasteel ramp. The light caught her armor and refracted through the mist like faint whispers of violet flame. Her silhouette was lithe and sculpted, but there was nothing soft about her gait.

She walked as if gravity bent politely out of her path.

But she was not in control of that gravity.

He was.

The cape that trailed behind her was silk-forged synthweave, woven in streaks of midnight and wine, its edges embroidered with arcane motifs that shimmered when struck by the faintest light. Every motion was practiced, every movement a declaration written in poise.

There were no weapons visible.

She did not need them.

The true edge of her presence was buried deep beneath the surface—beneath her words, her voice, her poise. The intelligence that waited behind every pause. The pressure she applied not to break, but to soften. She was a blade already in motion, arcing gently through the long game of Sith politics.

And now she had come to press that blade deeper into the throat of fate.

As she reached the edge of the ramp, her posture did not shift, her head did not turn. She simply existed, suspended at the very edge of the storm.

And then Serina Calis stepped into the world once more.

Let it bear witness.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The world remembered her.

Dromund Kaas seethed as if in mourning of her return, the clouds above churned with unnatural fury, split by violet lightning that bled sideways like torn muscle across the blackened sky. Thunder rolled low and unending amidst such ebullient wrath. The Umbral Maw was an all consuming presence over everything that tread upon this world, and its darkness remembered her, the touch evident of the one who mastered it. But below the storm, all was still.

There, he was waiting.

Beneath the towering facade of the Sith Citadel, its spires were like claws scraping the belly of the heavens, its foundations sunk deep into ancient strata where the screams of the forgotten still echoed, where the bones of ancient history foretold its dark legacy amongst the Sith Order stood a lone figure. One who was wreathed in silence, framed by obsidian monoliths etched with Sith scripture, the Dark Lord of the Sith, Shadow Hand of the Kainate, and Sovereign of Dromund Kaas Darth Prazutis waited as the shuttle descended in slow, reverent descent.

The Shadow Hand didn't pace back and forth as it came down. No, he didn't even speak, he didn't need to. Clad in the Vestments of the Shadow Hand, the Zâvrai Kôzkar, he appeared as a thing summoned, not born. The Dark Lords gigantic form, towering and immutable, was draped in layered robes of ritual black, their weave humming with eldritch runes and entropic flame. Incense-smoke curled from unseen braziers around him, the scent heavy with myrrh, ash, and the iron tang of sacrificial blood. Crimson glow seeped through the stitched seams of the garment, leaking like the embers of a dormant cataclysm. Metal plates on the shoulders, hands, and boots drank in the light. Any features of his face were hidden beneath the folds of the robes deep hood, all except for a pair of eyes that burned like twin suns.

The earth had gone quiet around him. Even the wind had ceased to blow. Gravity, it seemed, waited on his will. It was as if the very world was at his beck and call. As the shuttle's ramp hissed open and Serina Calis descended in her whispering violet-black regalia, the citadel did not erupt in trumpets or fire. It simply acknowledged her. Every shadow drew longer. Every line of architecture leaned, imperceptibly, toward the place where she stood. Then? Then the Shadow Hand moved. He stepped forward with the grace of a titan in ceremony. Each footfall rang with deep, echoing finality across the obsidian platform. The Dark Lord's presence pressed upon the senses like a descending weight, a gravitational anchor forged of ancient sin and absolute certainty.

When he spoke, it wasn't loud. But it drowned everything else. "You return without armor. Without weapons. Without pretense." The Dark Lords paused. "Good. You come as one who understands what this place is." He came to a stop before her, near enough for the storm's flickering light to carve spectral flame across the folds of his vestments, and yet far enough that the chasm between them was felt in more than distance. The robes bled into shadow making his form less and less a coherent whole and more apart of the seething darkness that consumed the world. The giants head tilted slightly. Whether it was curiosity or judgment, it didn't show. "Your efforts are not unknown to me, Serina Calis. You were tempered in silence. Forged in exile. The ruin you leave in your wake…speaks more clearly than any herald ever could. I see all you’ve observed, and some things not yet spoken." It foretold of her position as his agent, as an agent of chaos sowing seeds of discord amongst rivals and foes of the Kainate, and perhaps that the infamous Lord of Lies knows more than one would want him to. Then, after another pause: "You come with a proposition." A long silence followed. The storm surged above, distant, like war drums at the edge of memory. Then, with a gesture subtle and absolute, he turned toward the doors of the Citadel, which rumbled open of their own accord, ancient slabs of black iron grinding apart to reveal darkness within. "Then come. Walk with me. Speak your offering." Prazutis said, and without another word, the Shadow Hand turned and began to walk, his robes whispering along the stone like the passage of a funeral procession into the tomb of kings.

Serina Calis​

 

[Serina Calis]

"Stepping into the Dark."

Tag - Darth Prazutis



Serina walked beside him, not as a shadow, not as an equal, but as function. As design. The edges of her cloak whispered in tandem with his robes, two specters carved in violet and black, threading their way into the tomb that was the Citadel. The storm churned behind them, like a curtain closing over the stage they had just left. The world did not watch them go. It listened.

She allowed the silence to stretch as they passed through the threshold, her form gliding just a step behind and to the side, her head bowed slightly beneath the weight of both her hood and the gravity of the man beside her. The scent of blood-iron and sacred ash filled the air, but Serina did not wrinkle her nose. She breathed it in. Like incense. Like truth.

Only once they had left the last gust of storm-wind behind did she speak.

"Sluis Van will fall before the cycle turns," Serina said, voice smooth, precise, and low enough that it didn't echo—an offering spoken in the space between thunderclaps. "Its planetary shield grid is antiquated. Industrial sprawl has left its surface fractured and decentralized. There are too many corridors of control, and no true center. Perfect for division. Perfect for conquest. It is an ideal first move."

She paused, long enough for the words to sink in, then continued.

"That is what the Velgrath demands, after all: precision. Strength, yes, but not the flagrant sort. Not the display. Victory here is not given to the loudest, or even the strongest. It will go to the Sith who sees the board clearest."

A faint smile played along her lips—subtle, beneath the trim of her hood. Not the smile of amusement. The smile of someone already calculating her endgame.

"I will not waste time with ceremony. The Fourth Legion matters. More than the title. More than the legacy. It is a lever. Whoever controls it controls the tempo of future wars—internal and otherwise. If we allow it to fall into incompetent hands, the next civil war will not be survived. It will be a grave."

Another few steps passed in silence, each one a syllable in a private litany.

"I intend to win it."

She said the words without grandeur. Without fire. They were not aspiration—they were inevitability wrapped in velvet.

"The Velgrath is already in motion. Entrants have begun carving their claims. Some with brute force. Others with misdirection. But none have chosen Sluis Van. Yet. I've made sure of it. What I intend to do there will secure not just a foothold—but logistical supremacy over the entire southern corridor of the Blackwall. Its orbital drydocks are unclaimed. Its supply chain runs into half a dozen vulnerable midrim systems, most of which are already under threat from warlords and deserters. If I take it first, I can control more than territory. I can control momentum."

She allowed herself a pause, the rhythmic motion of their steps echoing faintly beneath the vaulted corridors of the Citadel. It was less conversation now, and more ritual. As though she were inscribing her will into the foundation of the world with every syllable.

"I understand the rules," Serina continued, more softly now, respectful—measured. "No outside reinforcement. No fleets across the Blackwall. No ritual summoning. No direct communication. I know them. I also know that no one truly obeys them—not fully. Every Sith worth the name is already calculating how to bend the rules without breaking them. I have no interest in dishonor. Only victory. And discretion."

She turned her head just enough for one violet-glinting eye to catch a sliver of the torchlight filtering from the walls. It gave her an otherworldly gleam, a soft predator's glow.

"I won't ask you to send armies. Or fleets. Or names. That would be foolish. And unnecessary. All I ask for is support—in the ways that cannot be traced. Supply lines that can be buried within legitimate commerce. "Volunteers". Communications that route through phantom nodes. False reports, dispatched to rivals at just the right moment. The kind of pressure only you can apply."

She didn't flatter. Not with him. That would be obvious. Insulting.

"You know the board, my Lord. You built most of it. I am not asking to borrow your power. I am asking you to invest it. In return, you will gain a victor bound not by loyalty, but by design. I will give you my vote in the Assembly. Every time. Without question. And when the next fracture comes—because we both know it will—I will give you the Fourth Legion, sworn and shaped to your vision. Not just as allies. As guarantors."

Her voice cooled.

"You will not need to command me. I will already have moved."

The silence that followed was not empty. It was poised. Balanced. Her next words were slower, deliberate.

"I chose not to wear Tyrant's Embrace today. Not because it offends you—it doesn't. But because it insulates me. It says that I expect war. That I fear harm. That I am more concerned with survival than function. And here, in this place, that would be a lie. I did not come to you as a fortress. I came as an instrument."

She turned slightly, just enough to let the torchlight trace the curve of the ceremonial armor she had chosen—elegant, curved, ceremonial, but still dangerous. Like a dagger offered hilt-first. But never disarmed.

"I will return from the Velgrath alone. No banners. No allies. No holdings. Only the knowledge that I have shaped my name into a threshold. And that crossing it is a declaration of war."

She tilted her head slightly, as if tasting the weight of her final words.

Then silence returned between them—not the pause of uncertainty. The pause of decision. The storm above no longer howled.

It listened.

 

[Darth Prazutis]

The storm behind them dwindled into memory, its chorus swallowed by the yawning hush of the Sith Citadel's cavernous interior. Darkness pressed in from all sides, not empty, but truly alive. The walls were etched in obsidian and runes, the air saturated with the residue of sacrifice and command. Every corridor was a vein through which power pulsed. Banners flew overhead silhouetted by the shadow bearing the mark of the Kainate, while eyes lurked within the deepest recesses of creatures, spirits carefully watching, and now two walked within it: the Shadow Hand, and the blade who sought purpose. Their steps echoed, not loud, but absolute. The Shadow Hand said nothing at first. He listened intently, not to her voice, but to the calculus beneath it. Calis's precision, her foresight, her careful understanding of how the board truly functioned. She didn't posture. She placed pieces, and he was already watching the next three moves unfold, analyzing every outcome and each variable.

"Sluis Van." The Dark Lord repeated, his voice a deep scrape of stone, ancient and tectonic. "Yes. A planet broken not by war, but rot. A corpse waiting to be carved. Let others chase crowns and battlefields. You seek the spine." He didn't turn his head as they passed beneath a gateway of barbed iron and screaming faces, statues frozen in agony. The Citadel's interior narrowed briefly into a vaulted passage choked in shadow before blooming open again into descending stairs, each inscribed with a Sith scripture that whispered at the soles of their boots. Servants and guards moved in the fringes of each hall, each kneeling deep in his presence as he moved while heavily armored guards slammed fists to their chests. The silent hum of dark technology reverberated through the walls. "Victory favors the one who sets the tempo." Prazutis continued. "But you intend to claim the conductor's baton before the first note is struck. That isn't arrogance. That is control." Then came her proposal, her true offering, laid out with the restraint of someone who understood that power need not shout. A testament to one who understood that for the price of power, of favor, the cost may be steep and you must be prepared to pay it.

The giant said nothing for several paces as they continued through the maze of a structure. But the temperature dropped. The shadows lengthened. They moved and twisted, it would leave her uncertain as to how far they truly traveled. The pressure of the air pressed harder against the chest the deeper they moved. Then, without turning, Prazutis spoke again, softer now, but heavier. "A seat at the Assembly bent to the Kainate without resistance. A Legion pledged in all but name. You come bearing more than ambition, you offer leverage." He paused. The Citadel seemed to breathe with him, as if the structure itself inhaled the weight of her words. It was a steep offering. To offer one's alignment in the assembly, to use the terrifying power of the Fourth Legion to fully back the Kainate, an aligned Imperator would not only spread influence but strengthen their position. "And you offer it not in tribute. But in transaction. Good." It spoke to her incredible ambition to realize what needed to be done, and give it without hesitation, it took conviction to do that.

There was no warmth in the praise. Only simple recognition. Respect, the kind born from calculus, not true sentiment. "You understand the rules." The Shadow Hand went on. "More importantly, the truth behind them. No one plays clean. No one ever has. But most pretend to. You do not. That is why you will not be among the ones buried beneath their own illusions." They passed a great arch of petrified tendrils, beneath which opened a chasm of black marble and hex-locked doors pulsing with ancient seals. A space few ever entered. The threshold of the Black Nexus. The Shadow Hand slowed. "The Fourth Legion is not just a weapon." Prazutis said at last. "It is a cipher. A command writ in motion. You would wield it not for glory, but for equilibrium or imbalance. Whichever best serves the endgame." Now, he turned to her, fully. The light caught the runes of his robes. The Mortarch's hooded face remained obscured but the eyes beneath burned like twin dying stars, hungering across aeons. "So I will test the edge of this instrument you offer. But know this: I do not invest lightly. I seed ruin. I fund inevitability."

The massive doors to the Black Nexus began to split open before them with seismic finality. "Step forward, Serina Calis." He intoned. "Let the darkness hear what we both already know." The storm didn't answer. Because the truth? The truth was already inside.

Serina Calis​